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Fall 2023 updates: community engagement, collaboration and policy

  • Writer: Amy Wotherspoon
    Amy Wotherspoon
  • Oct 18, 2023
  • 1 min read

To continue our fall 2023 updates, the Silva21 community met on Wednesday, October 18th to discuss ongoing research projects under the theme of community engagement, collaboration and policy. We heard from our First Nations partners from W8banaki and eight HQPs on multiple research projects! Check out summaries of their updates below.



Deliberative-analytic framework to engage publics and stakeholders - Dane Pedersen, PhD student, UBC


Following British Columbia’s most devasting wildfire season on record, forest-dependent communities are struggling to respond to the rapidly increasing impacts of climate change. In partnership with Nazko First Nation, Dane’s work supports the creation of a Land Use Plan (LUP) for Nazko’s traditional territory. She will conduct a document analysis of forest policies in the Quesnel Timber Supply Area (QTSA) to place the LUP within a larger historical and policy context, illustrating how forest management in British Columbia has developed over time. This exercise will provide clarity on the ways Indigenous knowledge and title was viewed, the series of events leading up to and informing major policy decisions, and how path dependency may constrain future management options. Next, Dane will co-develop an interactive policy “roadmap” will situate the LUP within the colonial policy landscape of British Columbia and Canada, supporting better continuity between the LUP and pre-existing policies where possible. This “roadmap” will empower community members to learn about and respond to natural resource operations taking place on their territory and identify leverage points for meaningful policy change. Through a survey and key informant interviews, Dane will explore how Nazko First Nation, in addition to industry and other stakeholders, perceives climate change, novel silviculture techniques, and the ways in which they may further land management on their traditional territory. In her presentation, Dane speaks to the four subject areas of her conceptional framework – decolonizing methodologies, collaborative governance, politics of knowledge, and decision-making under uncertainty – and how they will inform her research. She also hopes to foster more connections across the social and natural sciences within Silva21 and encourages HQPs and partners to reach out.






Dane Pedersen

PhD student

University of British Columbia

Supervisor: Shannon Hagerman

Project Page

dp3461@student.ubc.ca


Adaptive silviculture for climate change trials - Lisa Han, PhD student, U of T


The measurement plots established by the ASCC and the Petawawa Research Forest (PRF) team this summer consisted of chemical site preparations and operational and experimental tree planting. As destructive samplings are restricted in these measurement sites, a new set of experimental plots were established this summer. We established 12 individual 30 m diameter plots, excluding control plots. Uneven terrain and geographic characteristics of the treatment sites presented challenges in establishing symmetrical planting areas. Additionally, to control for vegetation competition in each individual experimental plots, we covered four out of eight planting areas with tarps to prevent herbicide spraying. We addressed the geographical challenges by replicating uneven planting areas for both herbicide restricted tarp areas, and un-tarped planting areas. These tarps were placed and removed promptly as herbicide sprays occurred. Planting areas have been staked and flagged to restrict unwanted tree planting from occurring by the operational tree planters this summer. With recent updates regarding the current seedling inventory available for these PhD plots, we are missing future-climate adapted provenances of oak and white pine. This will need to be taken into consideration when designing the objectives and the experimental design of the study and mitigation strategies will need to be implemented to supplement these missing provenances of trees.





Lisa Han

PhD student

Supervisor: John Caspersen

Project Page

15lh29@queensu.ca


Revisiting existing trials - Ethan Ramsfield, PhD student, UAlberta


Silviculture intensification is being used across the boreal forest to increase productivity. However, there are concerns about increased silviculture intensity reducing the complexity and heterogeneity of stands. This concept is based on the management of monocultures, with few studies looking at how silviculture intensification impacts regenerating mixedwood forests, when multiple species are maintained. Mixedwoods play a crucial role in the boreal forest ecosystem, comprising a substantial portion of the landscape and providing numerous ecological benefits. In the Canadian boreal forest, mixedwoods are typically a mix of trembling aspen and white spruce. They provide numerous benefits over monocultures, including higher biodiversity, productivity, resilience to pests and pathogens, and are expected to respond better to climate change. The purpose of this study is to examine how increased intensity of silviculture treatments, while attempting to maintain a mixedwood forest type impacts the structural diversity and homogeneity when regenerating mixedwood stands. To answer this question data from the Timmins NEBIE site will be used. NEBIE, which stands for natural disturbance, extensive, basic, intensive and elite (referring to the intensity of silviculture), is a long term study across northern Ontario looking at the impact intensive silviculture has on a variety of criteria and indicators. Of the eight sites across northern Ontario, data gathered from the Timmins site, which is a boreal mixedwood, will be used to answer the above question. The specific prescriptions for the Timmins site are:

- Natural: Unharvested.

- Extensive: Natural regeneration.

- Basic: Disk trenched, white spruce planted at 1800 sph, glyphosate sprayed throughout, removing about 80% of the aspen.

- Intensive: Perpendicular disk trench, white spruce planted at 2200 sph, 2 glyphosate applications in 27 m wide strips with 3-6 m in between.

- Elite: Perpendicular disk trench, white spruce planted at 2200 sph, 2 selective glyphosate applications leaving 800-1100 sph aspen.


For this part of my project, the component of structural diversity that will be assessed is the spatial component. The main question I am seeking to answer for this part of my project is: how does the Intensity of silviculture affect the spatial arrangement of trees when seeking to maintain multiple species? To assess this, the functions I have used are the pair correlation function, describing the arrangement of coniferous trees and deciduous trees, and the bivariate pair correlation function, describing the relationship between them. The main initial results show the natural, basic, and elite treatment have a similar arrangement of conifer and deciduous trees and the extensive and intensive show significant aggregation. When using the bivariate pair correlation function the elite treatment was effective at creating an intimate mixture by showing significant attraction between the deciduous and coniferous trees, the natural, extensive, and basic all show random distribution, where the intensive treatment shows significant repulsion. The next steps involve analyzing diameter distributions using the mark correlation coefficient








Ethan Ramsfield

PhD student

Supervisor: Brad Pinno and Wayne Bell

Project Page

eramsfie@ualberta.ca


Flexibility in forest management to preserve caribou habitat - Catherine Beaulieu, PhD student, ULaval


Lichen represents an important resource in terms of habitat selection for woodland caribou. However, due to the difficulty in estimating lichen volume, this resource is often overlooked in habitat selection studies. Falldorf et al. (2013) introduced the Lichen Volume Estimator algorithm, which uses Landsat satellite images to estimate lichen volume in open environments.


Therefore, we undertook testing this algorithm in a denser forest environment to assess its accuracy and reliability for our habitat selection analysis on the island of Newfoundland. On-site measurements of lichen height and ground cover percentage in various vegetation classes at 65 sampling locations were collected in order to validate the lichen volume predictions made by the algorithm.


Subsequently, preliminary analyses of caribou travel speed based on lichen volume were conducted to explore whether lichen volume had an impact on caribou movement behavior in Newfoundland.





Catherine Beaulieu

PhD project

Université Laval

Supervisor: Alexis Achim

Project Page

catherine.beaulieu.14@ulaval.ca

Culturally important species - Laurence Boudreault, PhD student, ULaval


Black ash is a culturally keystone species for the W8banaki Nation, which uses it, among other things, for basketry. This species is currently threatened by the emerald ash borer, land use, and climate change. Furthermore, knowledge carriers are increasingly having difficulty accessing high-quality black ash trees for basketry, because land is highly privatizes, but also because wood properties and quality of the wood appear to have been changing in recent years. Therefore, the first step of this project was to document the wood properties sought in black ash for use in basketry. In fact, some annual growth rings are good, while others are not. It turns out that the width and density of the annual growth rings are the properties that most influence the quality of the wood for basketry. Yet, those properties can be influenced by many factors, as climate, competitions, light availability etc. It is also known that ring width and density can be altered and influenced by silvicultural practices. In an effort to implement adaptation measures to promote the growth of high-quality black ash trees for basketry, we are currently trying to better understand the conditions under which ash trees produce annual growth rings of the right width and density. Finally, we will make sure that These adaptation measures aim to support the nation in its basketry practice and will be representative of indigenous needs and values.




Laurence Boudreault

PhD student

Université Laval

Supervisor: Alexis Achim

Project page

laurence.boudreault.3@ulaval.ca

Forest management plans for resilience landscapes - Helin Dura, PhD student, ULaval



Helin Dura

PhD student

Université Laval

Supervisor: Alexis Achim

Project Page

helin-subhi.dura.1@ulaval.ca


Teaching silviculture - Amy Wotherspoon, Postdoctoral Fellow, UBC


Silviculture has traditionally been thought of as the art and science of forest management, specifically of growing and tending to forest crops (Nyland 2016). Now in the 21st century as forests face unprecedented challenges due to climate change, how we view, learn and teach silviculture is changing as well. This includes moving away from the historical ‘art’, or ‘gut feelings’, of silviculture towards data-driven science that utilizes new technology and methods to meet demands of constantly changing policy, economy, landowner interests and climate. This new culture of adaptive silviculture encompasses 1) observing trends and collecting data to assess tree growth and vigour, 2) improving growth models and prediction methods to account for new climate realities, and 3) testing innovative silvicultural treatments and forest management strategies to new socio environmental realities (Achim et al. 2021).


As we aim to optimize silvicultural research and teaching to include aspects of public perception, socioeconomic drivers and new technology, the interdisciplinary nature of these collaborations often results in multiple pockets of expertise that tend to become siloed into individual fields of study. As we ask foresters to broaden their scope of practice beyond growing and cultivating trees to incorporate the ongoing demands of the forestry sector, is it possible that some aspects of forestry are being stripped away and components of silviculture being lost in the mix? Forestry accredited universities are increasing the number of interdisciplinary programs and specialized certifications to meet a shifting forestry market and new career paths such as carbon markets, conservation and social science collaboration (Connaughton, 2015), though there is only so much time in a conventional four-year undergraduate calendar to ensure all learning objectives are met and competencies enable them to fit their functional and practical courses together. So as a previous generation of foresters settle into retirement and there is a shift away from traditionally distinctive jobs of the labour market (Adams, 2010) will the next generation of silviculturists will be able to integrate an interdisciplinary approach with the new data-driven science of silviculture.


In this concept paper we aim to conceptualize current views of Canadian silviculture in the 21st century and how the ongoing evolution of forest management philosophies and academic training will impact the next generation of silviculturists. We will identify past and current competencies required by silviculturists as defined by accredited university programs and certifications in Canada and how these are likely to evolve in the upcoming century. We will explore how silviculture is likely to change in the face of socioeconomic changes and how these will translate into new learning objectives and the need to bridge a greater number of competencies to prepare for unprecedented changes due to climate change. It is our hope that the ideas presented here reach those with a direct link to educating, training or mentoring the next generation of foresters to ensure silviculture remains an essential tool in a forester’s toolbox.







Amy Wotherspoon

Postdoctoral Fellow

University of British Columbia

Supervisor: Alexis Achim, Nicholas Coops

Project Page

amy.wotherspoon@ubc.ca

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Our next update meetings will take place in Spring 2024! Stay tuned with all news Silva21 by subscribing to our newsletter at the bottom of this page.


 
 
 

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